Re: <nettime> irregular ukraine linklist

[David Garcia <d.garcia@new-tactical-research.co.uk>]

    >PLEASE ADD some more *diverse* and irregular materials to expand the
    >perspectives, and also regarding the multiple aggressors and profiteers
    >of our disturbingly not-so-new gruesome little proxy WW3 simulations !

    >We might actually need a little more light shed on the varieties of
    >warmongering anti-horizons, in order to get back on track with
    >strategies to fight for international solidarity - and negotiate peace -
   > on our one and only inhabitable planet !

Time to Re-learn the Habit of Fear Again

Boris Johnson is busy cos-playing Churchill again, running around the world and committing the UK 
to go to the aid of Finland if attacked by Russia and is clearly delighted by its intention to join NATO
So re-enforcing Putin's narrative of an expansionary NATO. All the while with Biden ramping up the 
marshal rhetoric. As civilians we have the right to expressions of extreme outrage but for statesmen 
and women this language is self-indulgent and serves no useful purpose. In fact anything other than 
the search for peace and the avoidance of WW3 is bullshit.

As a child of the cold war and I was 11 years old during the Cuban Missile crisis. I was frankly 
terrified and remember getting up every morning to read the headlines of my father's newspaper 
before he got hold of it. The doomsday movies of the time had a gritty realism that make today's 
apocalyptic offerings look empty as though the appropriate level of terror has drained away in the 
intervening decades. We have un-learned the habit of real fear to learn what is at stake again.

As Edward Luce pointed out in the FT . ( 29/04/2022) "The concept of mutually assured destruction, 
which took hold after 1962, is that each side has a clear window on the other’s routines and thinking. 
Most of the information-sharing that was put in place has been abandoned in the past decade. 
Putin has closed down cold war protocols and even accused Russian nuclear scientists who want to 
meet their US counterparts of being spies. This means the two adversaries, which account for 90 per 
cent of the world’s warheads, are far more ignorant of each other’s signalling than they were in the 1970s 
and 1980s."-  Ignorance, in this situation, is not bliss-

I was therefore pleased that there was some recognition of the dangers of not being scared enough
In this long read in this morning's Guardian -  
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/12/forgetting-the-apocalypse-why-our-nuclear-fears-faded-and-why-thats-dangerous 
    
David Garcia



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